JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE: APOSTLE OF GERMAN CULTURE TO AMERICA

187 Pages·2016·11.26 MB·English

by  THOMAS

The Pennsylvania State College
The Graduate School
I Department of German
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE
APOSTLE OF GERMAN CULTURE TO AMERICA
A Dissertation
by
John Wesley Thomas
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
I;00TOR OF PHILOSOPHY
December, 19K2
Approved:
Professor of English Lieterature
Approved:
Professor of German ^
Head of the Departme:
I
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE i
I LEHRJAHRE ................................. 1
Ne-wton and Boston ................... 1
Cambridge .............................. 7
II WANDERJAHRE.......■...................... 58
Louisville . . . . . ......... . . . . . 58
III MEISTERJAHRE............................. 97
Boston and the Transcendentalists . . . . . 97
Later Yfritings...........................124
BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................... 174
PREFACE
The purpose of this dissertation is to determine the extent
to which James Freeman Clarke was influenced by the literature,
philosophy, theology, and criticism of Germany, and to show how he, as
editor, minister, and author, aided in the diffusion of German culture
in America. Because of the paucity of biographical and critical works
of Clarke it was necessary to base the research largely upon primary
sources, which yielded a wholly unanticipated wealth of material.
Manuscripts, principally letters, were found in the Aldrich Memorial
Library, the library of the Filson Club, Louisville,Kentucky, the
records of the First Unitarian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, the records
of the Y.M.C.A, at the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts? the
Concord Free Public Library, the Boston Public Library, the New York
Public Library, the Library of Congress? the libraries of the Connecticut
Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New York
Historical Society, the Ohio State Arcbae(logical and Historical Society?
Harvard College Library, Wellesley College Library, the libraries of
Yale, Princeton, Brown and Johns Hopkins University, and of the Uni­
versity of Chicago. To the officials and attendants of these institu­
tions grateful acknowledgment for their assistance is herewith made.
Most important for this study were the manuscripts in the
possession of Clarke’s grandson, Mr. James F. Clarke of Boston. In
the latter’s autograph collection were letters to Clarke from Emerson,
Margaret Fuller, Holmes, Longfellow, Theodore Parker, and others. In
ii
a trunk at the home of Mr. Clarke the author discovered, in addition,
a great number of manuscripts by James Freeman Clarke: lectures,
letters., including about seventy to Margaret Fuller, an unpublished
chapter of his autobiography, unpublished portions of his diary, s
minutes of The Conversational Club to which he.belonged, hundreds of
unpublished poems, including translations from the German as well as
original poetry, and various other source material. These stored
manuscripts were of particular interest, for they had not been examined
by scholars since 1889, when Edward Everett Hale selected a few of the
letters for publication in James Freeman Clarke, Autobiography. Hiarv
and Correspondence. which he edited. Through the generosity of Mr.
Clarke the author was permitted to borrow much of this material to
study at length, for which favor he would like to express his deep
appreciation. He also wishes to thank Professor John Paul Pritchard
of Washington and Jefferson College, Professor William L. Werner of
The Pennsylvania State College, and, especially. his adviser, Professor
Philip A. Shelley, also of The Pennsylvania State College, for their
guidance throughout this research.
LEHRJAHRE
Newton and Boston
In the early years of the nineteenth century Boston was a
flourishing commercial center. With each three-masted schooner that
entered the harbor on its return from far-off, little-known places its
wealth and importance increased. Its inhabitants were a sturdy, opti­
mistic people. To the strong self-reliance which they had inherited
from their Puritan forebears had been added that confidence which
comes from a measure of success attained and unlimited prospects for
the future. Boston, too, was more than a seaport. Mill-dams were being
built on the neighboring streams, small factories were going up which
were to compete more and more with the great industries across the
ocean. Boston was becoming rich, and, with this increased wealth, came
the luxuries which wealth brings: theaters, museums, a concert hall,
and even the beginnings of literature and art.-*-
Boston was changing— there was no doubt of that— but the spiritual
transformation that was taking place was more striking even than the
material. How could they be poor, miserable worms of the dust, reasoned
the Bostonians, when they had accomplished so much? Why should their
eternal happiness rest upon the chance that they had been predestined
to heaven rather than damnation? They could bend everything else to
1 The material and spiritual transformation which Boston was
undergoing at this time is portrayed by Van Wyck Brooks in his book,
Th,e Flowering of New England (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1936),
passim.
2
their will, even mighty England, why could they not govern their own
fate in eternity? The foundations of Calvinism that had endured so
well through the many years of privation and hardship were crumbling
under the weight of Boston's prosperity; and strict, unbending Congre­
gationalism was succumbing to tolerant Unitarianism with hardly a struggle,
leaving the frontier districts, where life was still hard, to carry on
the Puritan traditions. It was not the doctrine, but rather the spirit
of Unitarianism that enabled it to supplant the established church.^
In fact the real doctrine of Unitarianism was not the belief in the
single personality of God, but rather the scientific method of reasoning
by which that belief was attained. As the advent of the surveyor's
chain had rendered the old land-raarks meaningless, so many of the
traditional dogmas of the church were found wanting when subjected to
the pitiless scrutiny of the new scholarship. Even the Divine inspira­
tion of the Bible, the very corner-stone of Orthodoxy, was questioned,
4
as was everything which did not conform to the dictates of the new god,
Reason, that usurper who had overthrown the old god of Tradition.
Rationalism had come to Boston, and, by its excessive materialism, was
already preparing the way for the Romantic reaction.
Into the midst of this revolution in thought and religion James
Freeman Clarke was bom, on the fourth of April, 1810. The place was
Hanover, New Hampshire, but this was purely "by accident— " as Clarke
protested, "for all my ancestors were Boston people for many
2 The Congregational Church was still being supported by taxa­
tion.
generations."3 His father, Samuel Clarke, was studying medicine at
the time under Dr. Nathan Smith of Dartmouth College. A few weeks
after the birth of his son Mr. Clarke took his wife and children to
Newton, Massachusetts, where they remained with his mother and his
step-father, while he returned to Hanover to finish his course of study
and take his degree as doctor of medicine. Coming back to Newton the
same year, 1810, Dr. Clarke began the practice of his profession. The
family remained for a few months at the home of the step-father, the
Reverend James Freeman, of King’s Chapel, in Boston, and then moved to
another house in Newton. James, however, remained with his step-grand-
father, who had become so fond of the boy that he wished to keep him as
a member of his own family. So it was that James Freeman Clarke spent
most of his childhood at the home of Dr. Freeman.
The boy’s education was begun under the tutelage of his grand­
father, and Clarke, in after years, never tired of praising the latter's
ability as a teacher. All the tedium was removed from instruction, and
study was made into play. "I did not know at the time what a wonderful
teacher he was," wrote Clarke, "He anticipated, sixty years, the best
methods of modern instruction."4- In particular did his grandson commend
Dr. Freeman’s method of teaching languages. He kept up the interest of
his student by frequent elaborations on the story they were reading
3 This was a letter to Epes Sargent dated February 5> 1880.
Boston Public Library Manuscript, hereinafter referred to as MS, BPL.
4 Edward Everett Hale, editor, James Freeman .Clarke. Autobiogran]
D.iarv and Correspondence (Boston and New York, 1891), p. 16.
A
and by telling him the words he did not know rather than having him
constantly consult the dictionary. The grammar to be learned was re­
duced to the absolute essentials. When the teacher could no longer
maintain the interest of his pupil, he turned his attention to something
else or sent him out to play. "The excellence of this method," wrote
Clarke, "may be seen in the fact that before I was ten years old I had
read a good deal of Ovid, some Odes of Horace, a little of Virgil, the
Gospel of Matthew in Greek, and had gone as far as Cubic Equations in
algebra.It was at this time that Clarke built the foundation for
the extensive knowledge of literature which he later possessed. Under
the old chestnut tree in the pasture he often sat and read the most
interesting books from his grandfather’s library, which "consisted
largely of books of theology, Latin and Greek classics, or learned
works in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.Of his reading as a boy
Clarke wrote in his Autobiography:
The English classics in Dr. Freeman’s library were of the
Queen Anne era. Thus I became quite familiar with the "Spectator"
and "Guardian," and writers of that period. If we had not many
books to read, we possessed some of the best. It did us no
harm to read over again and again "Paradise Lost," Pope's
"Essay on Man," "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Robinson Crusoe,"
and "Gulliver's Travels." The poems of Prior, Gay, and Peter
Pindar were also in the Freeman library, in old editions.7
But among some numbers of "The Monthly Anthology" I found
the translation, by Sir William Jones, of the Hindoo play
"Sakoontala," and there was an old edition of Shakespeare in
a number of duodecimo volumes. ... There was also a volume
5 Ibid.. p. 17.
6 Ibid., pp. 19-20.
7 Ibid.f p. 21.
5
of "Elegant Extracts" in verse, by Vicesimus Knox, which con­
tained very good reading. From that volume I learned some­
thing of Spenser and Dryden, Swift and Pope,^
------James was especially fond of Scott and Pope. Later at the
famous Boston Latin School he received the complete works of Pope as
a prize, and, in the same way, came into possession of Johnson’s
Lives pf the Poets, and the poems of Scott, Burns and Cooper.
When James was ten years old his father and mother moved to the
Boston house of Dr. Freeman, where the latter lived during the winter
months, when travel from Newton was difficult, and James went along so
that he might attend the Latin School. It was a well established
tradition in the family that the boys should all go to the Boston Latin
School. James* father, his grandfather Clarke, and Dr. Freeman had
gone to the school, so it was quite natural that he and his brothers
should attend. Boston was justly proud of its Latin School. As the
first public school in America it had always been an example of democracy
to the nation. Here the son of the rich merchant and the son of the
blacksmith associated on equal terms, and later they were equally likely
to add their names to the long and imposing list of famous alumni.
However, while the social influence of the school was good, its pedagogy
had come to be quite poor. There was no attempt made to sugar-coat
education or even to make it digestible; the emphasis instead was on
the committing to memory of long lists of abstract and unexplained
formulas and uninteresting and unintelligible rules. In looking back
8 Ibid.. p. 20.
6
on this instruction Clarke conceded:
There might be a dull kind of discipline in thisj but, as
I think, an injurious one. It was a discipline of the power
of cramming the memory with indigestible facts and sounds. It
taught us to make a strenuous effort to accomplish a disagree­
able task. But is not life full enough of such tasks? Is there
ever a day in which we do not have to do them? Why, then, take
the time which might be occupied in learning something inter­
esting and useful, in learning as a mere tour de force that
which we should never use? It had a benumbing effect upon the
mind. It stupified our faculties. It gave a distaste for study.
Latin, Greek, and mathematics, taught in this way, inspired
only dislike.9
Since his grandfather* s method of teaching had been so different
from that of the Latin School, James did not do well at first. He was
placed in an experimental class and set to memorizing Adams* Latin
Grammar, at which task he progressed very slowly. In fact, as he said,
he "immediately went to the foot of the class, and there remained."^O
One by one the boys were taken from this trial class and transferred,
according to their abilities, to various grades. Finally only two re­
mained: John Osborne Sargent, who had been at the head of the class,
and James, who had been at the foot. The two were then placed together
in a higher division than any of the rest. The teacher’s judgment was
vindicated; for, as soon as James was set to translating, his previous
home instruction began to tell and he became one of the two best scholars
in his division, Sargent being the other. Now he began to take a real
pleasure in his studies, a pleasure which Clarke never admitted to have
taken in his subsequent work at Harvard.
9 Ibid.. pp. 26-27.
10 Ibid.. p. 30.